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Florida Ballot Recount Chaos

To borrow a line from the musical, ″1776″, why is it always Broward County that breaks the king′s peace? In this case, an election result. Mayhem in Broward County, Florida, is disrupting what should have been a victory for Republican candidates in the U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races. Both were close requiring automatic, state-wide recounts. However, in Broward County, they failed to count the votes unlike the other 67 Florida counties. Even in the panhandle, where a hurricane wrought devastation, those elections and ballot counts went off with few problems. But not in Broward County.

Part of the problem is the incompetence of the election staff, especially the election supervisor, Brenda Snipes. In 2016, she was found to have violated several state and federal election laws, punishable by up to 5 years in prison. Yet, she was still on the job not doing her job last week. She failed to report the number of votes cast regularly as well as those counted. On top of that, after voting was suppose to end, more ballots kept turning up for days. Broward County is worse than a laughing stock. It has become a symbol of all that is wrong with our electoral process.

Tim Canova, a Florida law professor, has been a public critic of Brenda Snipes. In 2016, he ran in the Democrat Party primary against Debbie Wassermann Schultz. Broward County cost him that election. His internal polling, usually more thorough and accurate than public polls conducted by news organizations, showed him beating Wassermann-Schultz. But the vote count in Broward County went awry with late ballots found, and other issues, much as last week′s election. Canova sued and an official investigation found Brenda Snipes and her team guilty of many errors. Among these was the fact that Snipes had destroyed ballots which, under law, were supposed to be kept and secured. She also had more ballots turned in than there are registered voters!

Last week′s election in Florida is already highly tainted thanks to Snipes and Broward County. Canova warned Governor Rick Scott in writing some 6 months ago to replace Brenda Snipes. I suspect that Scott now wishes he had. Scott won the election last week against incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson. Even with the mandatory machine recount, Scott′s victory was large enough to overcome any normal ballot inaccuracies. However, since Tuesday′s polls were closed, thousands of ballots keep turning up in Broward County. Ballots are brought to the counting room not by police, as required by law, with a written ′chain of custody′, but by various people, sometimes in trunks of cars or rented trucks. Bags of undelivered mail-in ballots were also found. Its a big mess!

Canova says that the vote is so tainted at this point that it should be done over. With a different team in place, of course! So far, Democrat Party lawyers are losing their legal battles in Florida′s courts. They probably will not do any better in federal courts. Another concern is that Brenda Snipes is allowing ballots from illegal immigrants, as well as by convicts to be counted. The current counting is running almost 3 to 1 in favor of Nelson in these late-arriving ballots rather than the usual average of 2 to 1 favoring Democrats. It appears that Brenda Snipes is trying to gin up enough ballots to give Nelson the win in Florida. Scott′s margin has already been slashed in half, from over 32,000 to about 16,000 more votes than Nelson just because of the chaos in Broward County.